I am a very courteous driver. I'm all about my blinkers and "no, please, you go!" and "no, really -- you" which I indicate with a brush of my hand, like a broom swooshing traffic. I flash the peace sign, too, to say thanks or you're welcome, which is slightly ironic, if I think about it, because I probably annoy all the people waiting behind me.
Then: it snows.
And the already tiny, cowpath-planned streets in the Small Town become teeny tiny roads for no one but gnomes herding teeny tiny cows. I think the population grows by a third in the summer, maybe more. Who cares? The streets shrink by half in the winter.
I can take some tourists in visors and zinc much better than this race course.
Have you ever tried to negotiate three kids out of a car into a snow bank so high you think you might lose a child to a slushy avalanche that will end under your tail pipe? When all the while you are pinned to the driver's door, frisk-style, because that's the only way you might live to see another day? And when you get the chance to make a break from the skidding traffic so you can rescue your stuck kids (one of whom has already lost a mitten), you will slide over ice in that very dainty way in which all your body parts disconnect from your brain and your mouth makes that rubber-band shape of horror that is so, so pretty?
Ever done that?
I have. Like EVERY DAY.
So tomorrow when I frown in your rear-view mirror when you hover and make your exhaust fill up my car as you wait for that one last spot at school pick-up? Please know that my frown is your frown -- I know you feel my pain.
I know you know my frustration and the ache of my kids' backpacks loaded with spare shoes and snow pants and that one glove for which we'll never find a match. I know you hustle your kids as quick as you can into the car and I also know it's like moving a stiff mummy into a very tiny box. I know how it is.
I know.
So when I unfortunately frown and don't flash the peace sign tomorrow? You'll get me, right? I mean, you'll know.
It's winter. I keep my fingers on the wheel.
8commentsBrilliant Person Wrote...
My kids and I tend to romanticize places with snow, because my kids have never lived where it snows and I've only lived in NYC where they take care of the snow for you and I never had to drive.
Schlepping kids in snow sounds very unromantic, and I imagine it would make me very cross.
I wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats on snowy nights when I know I will have to drive the oldest to school that morning. Toss in a questionable and highly tricky 5-way stop with the winter mix and I feel like tormenting him by making him ride the school bus.
I am SO with you. No peace sign out of me, but always a friendly "thank you" wave when someone pulls over on one of our neighborhood cart paths and lets me go by. And, when I pull over (which is usually the way it goes) for someone else in their Escalade or Suburban or whatever and they DONT acknowledge my kindness and just plow themselves right by me without a look? I sort of freakin' hate them for it.
Ditto wsxwhx606! You stole the words out of my mouth! See..it's different where we are...Just a little snow shuts the entire freakin' town down and every freaks the hell out...So, NO CHILD GOES TO SCHOOL...EVER AGAIN!
I don't know how you drive on those tiny twisted little tiny roads when there's ice. Really. Do they make the whole town one way so you never ever have to have a car coming at you head-on?
You can come visit me til it's over. We're cold but we don't have snow. Yet.
I hate snow. I felt every word of this post in my soul. Stay strong, sister, the winter is half over.
I live in Wisconsin. We have three feet of snow in the yard. It is staying until Spring. There is more coming.
It is like a slick forced rollar coster of dome.
I understand. I am right there with you.
Funny thing, I'm living that this year and I haven't lived it for 21 years since I left Nebraska. I'm liking it. But I'm getting ready for it to end.
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